Otto and Sophie Bentwood live in a changing neighborhood in Brooklyn. Their stainless-steel kitchen is newly installed, and their Mercedes is parked curbside. After Sophie is bitten on the hand while trying to feed a stray, perhaps rabies-infected cat, a series of small and ominous disasters begin to plague the Bentwoods' lives, revealing the fault lines and fractures in a marriage-and a society-wrenching itself apart. First published in 1970 to wide acclaim, Desperate Characters stands as one of the most dazzling and rigorous examples of the storyteller's craft in postwar American literature - a novel that, according to Irving Howe, ranks with "Billy Budd, The Great Gatsby, Miss Lonelyhearts, and Seize the Day."

A Single Shot

Ned fired the forbidden rifle just once, at a flickering shadow in the autumn moonlight. But someone -- a face, fleetingly seen staring at him from an attic window -- was watching.

And when a one-eyed cat turns up at an elderly neighbor's woodshed, Ned is caught in a web of guilt, fear, and shame that he cannot escape -- until another moonlit night, come spring, brings redemption and surprising revelations.

A classic American novel from the author of 'Borrowed Finery'. On the eve of their trip to Africa, Laura Maldonada Clapper and her husband, Desmond, sit in a New York City hotel room, drinking scotch-and-sodas and awaiting the arrival of three guests: Clara, Laura's timid daughter from a previous marriage; Carlos, Laura's flamboyant brother; and Peter, a melancholy editor whom Laura hasn't seen for over a year. But what begins as a bon voyage party soon becomes a bitter, claustrophobic clash of family resentment. From the hotel room to the tiny restaurant to which the five embark, Laura presides over the escalating innuendo and hostility with imperial cruelty, for she is hiding the knowledge that her mother, the family matriarch, has died of a heart attack that morning. Intense and unerringly observed, 'The Widow's Children' is a tour de force from the incomparable Paula Fox.

Paula Fox was born in 1923 to a young bohemian couple who left her a few days after her birth in a Manhattan orphanage. Rescued by her grandmother, she was passed from hand to hand, the kindness of strangers interrupted by brief and disturbing reunions with her darkly enchanting parents. Her father was a good-looking, hard-drinking Hollywood screenwriter (among his credits is 'The Last Train to Madrid', which Graham Greene declared was 'the worst movie I ever saw') and her mother, icily glamorous, is given to almost psychotic bursts of temper that punctuate a deep, disturbing indifference.

They exercise upon Paula a drip-drip cruelty, perhaps without quite realising it, as they shuffle her from one exotic place to another, never spending more than a few scattered moments with their daughter. In New York, Paula lives with her strange Spanish grandmother. In Cuba, she wanders about freely on a sugarcane plantation owned by a wealthy relative. In California, she finds herself cast away on the dismal margins of Hollywood, where famous actors and literary celebrities – Buster Keaton, John Wayne, Orson Welles, F. Scott-Fitzgerald – glitteringly appear and then fade away.

In this extraordinarily moving and unusual memoir – this portrait of a life adrift – there are many things she can't remember, many things she can't explain, but the gaps are telling, signifying a child's quiet acceptance of the way things are. In a voice of great clarity and simplicity that has no truck with manipulation or reconstruction with hindsight, Paula Fox has given us an unforgettable appraisal of just how much – and how little – a child requires to survive.

INTRODUCTION BY JONATHAN FRANZEN

Otto and Sophie Bentwood live childless in a renovated Brooklyn brownstone. The complete works of Goethe line their bookshelf, their stainless steel kitchen is newly installed, and their Mercedes is parked outside. After Sophie is bitten on the hand while trying to feed a half-starved neighbourhood cat, a series of small and ominous disasters begin to plague their lives, revealing the faultlines and fractures in a marriage - and a society - wrenching itself apart.

* A scorching portrait of a 1960s New York marriage which opens out into a brilliant examination of the paradoxes of civilisation.

* A classic of American literature from a writer championed and brought back into print by many contemporary greats of American lit - Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace, Andrea Barrett etc.

? The book and the author that inspired Jonathan Franzen to write again.

* A Paperback Original

* From the author of the memoir, Borrowed Finery, one of the NY Times Best Books of 2001 (only 9 chosen in total!)

* Published alongside The Widow?s Children, a novel which closely mirrors the events in Borrowed Finery.

While his over-protective parents are away on a trip, Lewis meets and makes a connection with an old Spanish shoemaker who teaches him that he can think for himself.

Eight-year-old Maurice's struggle to protect his bedroom full of treasured "junk" from unsympathetic parents undergoes a transformation when the family moves to the country.

Vividly rendered...haunting....[Paula Fox] writes with silken ease and a sensitivity to nuance."—Newsday

In 1941, twenty-three-year-old Helen Bynum leaves home for the first time and sets out from rural New York to find her Aunt Lulu, an aging actress in New Orleans. There she finds a life of passion and adventure, possibilities and choices. Falling in with a bohemian group of intellectuals, she discovers romance and sex, friendship and risk, her world mirrored by the steamy mystery of the French Quarter.

"Wonderfully rich."—New York Times Book Review

"[Fox] knows how to pace a story, how to use the richest language to portray the barest of scenes. And she knows how to create a character."—Vogue

"One of America's best novelists."—Shirley Hazzard

"Haunting, lyrical....A coming-of-age outing stamped with a mastery that less mature writers can only hope to eventually achieve."—Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"One of our most intelligent...contemporary novelists."—The Nation

"A rare and wondrous thing....[Fox] knows how to create a character."—Vogue

Luisa de la Cueva was born on the Caribbean island of Malagita, of a plantation owner's son and a native woman, a servant in the kitchen. Her years on Malagita were sweet with the beauty of bamboo, banana, and mango trees with flocks of silver-feathered guinea hens underneath, the magic of a victrola, and the caramel flan that Mama sneaked home from the plantation kitchen. Luisa's father, fearing revolution, takes his family to New York. In the barrio his once-powerful name means nothing, and the family establishes itself in a basement tenement. For Luisa, Malagita becomes a dream. Luisa does not dream of going to college, as her friend Ellen does, or of winning the lottery, as her father does. She takes a job as a servant and, paradoxically, grows more independent. She marries and later raises a son alone. She works as a servant all her life. A Servant's Tale is the story of a life that is simple on the surface but full of depth and richness as we come to know it, a story told with consummate grace and compassion by Paula Fox.

"[A] book I absolutely loved....Marvelously observed, horrific without being violent, modesty and reticent."—Marina Warner, author of From the Beast to the Blonde

Poor George gives us George Mecklin, a restless, soft-spoken teacher at a private school in Manhattan. Depressed by his life of vague moral purpose, George discovers a local adolescent named Ernest breaking into his house. Rather than hand the boy over to the police, as his nagging wife insists, George instead decides to tutor him. His life consequently implodes. Filled with vividly acid portrayals of American life in the 1960s, prescient explorations of suburban anomie, and a riotously disturbing cast of supporting characters, Poor George is a classic American novel further reminder of Paula Fox s astonishing literary gifts."

Born in the 1920s to nomadic, bohemian parents, Paula Fox is left at birth in a Manhattan orphanage, then cared for by a poor yet cultivated minister in upstate New York. Her parents, however, soon resurface. Her handsome father is a hard-drinking screenwriter who is, for young Paula, "part ally, part betrayer." Her mother is given to icy bursts of temper that punctuate a deep indifference. Never sharing more than a few moments with his daughter, Fox's father allows her to be shuttled from New York City, where she lives with her passive Spanish grandmother, to Cuba, where she roams freely on a relative's sugarcane plantation, to California, where she finds herself cast upon Hollywood's seedy margins. The thread binding these wanderings is the "borrowed finery" of the title of this astonishing memoir of one writer's unusual beginnings, which was instantly recognized as a modern classic.

On the eve of their trip to Africa, Laura Maldonada Clapper and her husband, Desmond, sit in a New York City hotel room, drinking scotch-and-sodas and awaiting the arrival of three friends: Clara Hansen, Laura's timid, brow-beaten daughter from a previous marriage; Carlos, Laura's flamboyant and charming brother; and Peter Rice, a melancholy editor whom Laura hasn't seen for over a year. But what begins as a bon voyage party soon parlays into a bitter, claustrophobic clash of family resentment. From the hotel room to the tony restaurant to which the five embark, Laura presides over the escalating innuendo and hostility with imperial cruelty, for she is hiding the knowledge that her mother, the family matriarch, has died of a heart attack that morning. A novel as intense as it is unerringly observed, The Widow's Children is another revelation of the storyteller's art from the incomparable Paula Fox.

Great Cloister: A Lost Canterbury Tale presents a new study of the heraldry, genealogy and history of the Canterbury Cathedral cloister. It is the first comprehensive and complete study of this monument ever undertaken, and it provides a detailed chronology as well as many new insights into the families who were donors. The monument is revealed to have been the personal project of Archbishop Thomas Arundel (d.1414), an individual closely connected with the overthrow of King Richard II. The work as a whole provides considerable insights into the revolution of 1399 and the troubled reign of Henry IV as seen through the lens of individual families. The cloister, as originally conceived, contained 856 heraldic shields, badges and devices of which 576 were unique. Some 365 families, principalities, religious foundations and other individuals both real and imagined were represented, some with more than one shield or device. More precisely, there were 252 families, 51 peerage families, 3 English royal families (Lancaster, York and Beaufort), 20 principalities, 12 religious foundations, 9 bishops, 7 saints, 3 heroes, 4 cities or towns, 2 priests, 1 monk and 1 for God himself (in the form of the Holy Trinity). The origins and evolution of each shield represented are considered in detail.